Counselling by Telephone

Book excerpt: `Well written, well researched... [the book] contributes to undermining ideas of professional hierarchy, in which long-term face-to-face is top of the pile, and short-term and the phone are the province of the amateur who knows not what they are up to. On the contrary, the counselling process as well as the use of counselling skills are resources that can be much more widely used than is possible if they are restricted to relatively long-term counselling. This is an excellent book covering a great deal of recent thinking about confidentiality, skills, training, quality and supervision in relation to the telephone [with] a useful chapter on its technology in relation to counselling′ - Counselling and Psychotherapy, The Journal of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy This book explores the essential skills needed to carry out effective telephone counselling - such as welcoming and establishing a relationship with clients; listening and responding; understanding silences; working with transference and fantasy; and recognizing and reacting to feelings - which are necessarily very often distinct from those involved in face-to-face counselling. Maxine Rosenfield challenges the view that telephone counselling is a poor relation to face-to-face counselling, arguing that for certain clients it may be the therapeutic medium of choice. She examines the benefits to both clients and counsellors of working by telephone, and highlights the technical and practical issues of which counsellors should be aware. She also covers the relatively new concepts of group counselling by telephone and counselling by other media, such as e-mail or letter.